Cecily Brown Exhibition at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Deichtorhallen Hamburg [Germany]

Cecily Brown
April 25 – August 30, 2009

The Deichtorhallen Hamburg present the artist’s first comprehensive exhibition in Europe. The show comprehends 48 works from 1998 – 2008.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown
Summer Love, 2000
Oil on canvas. 190.5 x 228.6 cm. (75 x 90 in.).
© Cecily Brown. Courtesy Thomas Holdings Inc. Collection

The painter Cecily Brown (born in 1969), London-based but living in New York, mostly chooses erotic motives for her large-format canvases, which she nearly abstracts to such an extent that they dissolve into pure chromaticity. Her energetic pictures, working on the borders between abstraction and figuration, have been one of the most distinctive positions in current painting since around 10 years.

Her works are collected by the most renowned museums of the world, such as Tate Britain, and the artist is considered the shooting star of a new expressive painting. “I use erotic photography to study the human body. What interests me is the emotional matter of these patterns”, Cecily Brown says.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown
Canopy, 2003-4,
Öl auf Leinwand/Oil on linnen, 203,2 x 203,2 cm/ 80 x 80 inches
© Cecily Brown. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Cecily Brown

Blick in die Ausstellung „Cecily Brown“ Deichtorhallen Hamburg April 2009.
Cecily Brown:” „Ha Ha Fresh” 2006, Öl auf Leinwand, 195,6 x 279.4 cm
© Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Brown’s vigorous and tactile oil paintings evoke the breadth of human experience, particularly the emotions associated with touch, pleasure, and passion. Widely inspired by the history of painting, from the figurative orders of Nicolas Poussin, Edouard Manet, and William Hogarth to the heady abstract expressionism of Willem de Kooning, Brown brings to the conventions of the genre a bold and, at times, ribald femininity.

Throughout her oeuvre, Brown has repeated certain motifs yet ascribes them different significations over time. For example the tent form — a primary image in her work that she associates with childhood books and nomads as well as paintings by Picasso, Goya and Bosch—is, in the new work, layered with fresh imagery that obfuscates the original form in varying degrees.

In the densely worked scenarios of Brown’s most recent paintings, flickering figures are enfolded in vivid pastoral landscapes and vanitas settings. Throughout the Skulldiver paintings, she carefully maintains the tension between abstract formal qualities and immanent figurative content, while in the Sarn Mere paintings, she continues to expound on the cautionary narrative fragments and sinister psychological undertones of her Black Paintings. Inspired in part by Mary Webb’s Precious Bane (1924), the Sarn Mere paintings evoke an imaginary place, a lake where all manner of dark happenings transpire.

In Carnival and Lent, one of Brown’s largest paintings, her signature tectonic structure dissolves into a blur of activity where figures and faces can be glimpsed amidst the pure energies of the brush. Brown’s previously representational schemes are rendered almost abstract through an increasing fragmentation of forms, underscoring her belief that her paintings should not have fixed meaning but rather reflect the flux of being in the world.

Blick in die Ausstellung

Blick in die Ausstellung „Cecily Brown“ Deichtorhallen Hamburg April 2009.
Cecily Brown: “Aujourd’hui Rose” 2005
Foto: © Wolfgang Neeb. Courtesy Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Blick in die Ausstellung

Blick in die Ausstellung „Cecily Brown“Deichtorhallen Hamburg April 2009.
Cecily Brown: “Tripe with Lemons” 2004;
“The Adoration of the Lamb” 2005-2006;
“Keychains and Snowstorms” 2004 (v.l.)
Foto: © Wolfgang Neeb. Courtesy Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Although best known for her bravura large-scale work, Brown will show a series of jewel-like, small paintings, which she began as a means by which to interpret the role of human scale and perception in her fragmented subjects, using a variety of brushes and techniques. These smaller scale paintings, which usually remain untitled, are not studies or contingencies for larger paintings, but rather works in themselves where Brown explores and resolves ideas and forms that began to emerge in her larger work and acquire new significance in this format.

ImagesCourtesy Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Images © Their respective owners

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William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961 – 2005 at the Morris Museum of Art

Morris Museum of Art, Augusta Georgia

William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961 – 2005
September 12 > November 8, 2009

William Christenberry Photographs, 1961–2005, a phenomenal retrospective exhibition of Christenberry’s Photographs, opens to the public at the Morris Museum of Art on September 16, 2009. The Morris Museum is the only Georgia venue hosting this exhibition.

William Christenberry

William Christenberry
Old House, near Akron, Alabama, 1964 (plate 100, 35mm)
© William Christenberry

“William Christenberry Photographs, 1961–2005 is an overview of the career of one of the South’s most important living artists,” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. “Organized by the Aperture Foundation, this exhibition brings to Augusta a body of work like no other. No one has so scrupulously and attentively captured a sense of place and time in quite the way that Bill Christenberry has. He is a remarkable artist, as is proven by this extraordinary body of work. He is America’s Proust.“

Since the early 1960s, William Christenberry has plumbed the regional identity of the American South, focusing his attention primarily on his childhood home, Hale County, Alabama. Widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of color photography, Christenberry draws inspiration from the work of Walker Evans, while paralleling the work of such international practitioners as Bernd and Hilla Becher. Ranging from his earliest Brownie photographs to his later work with a large-format camera, William Christenberry Photographs, 1961–2005 is a survey of the artist’s poetic documentation of the Southern landscape and vernacular architecture that surrounded him as he grew up.

William Christenberry

William Christenberry
Rabbit Pen, near Moundville, Alabama, 1998 (plate 26, 8 x 10)
© William Christenberry

The exhibition, coupling never-before-seen photographs with images that are now iconic, reveals how the history, the very story of place, is at the heart of Christenberry’s ongoing project. While the focus of his work is the American South, it touches on universal themes related to family, culture, nature, spirituality, memory, and aging. Christenberry photographs real things in the real world—ramshackle buildings, weathered commercial signs, lonely back roads, rusted-out cars, whitewashed churches, decorated graves. Dutifully returning to photograph the same locations annually—the green barn, the palmist building, the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others—he has fulfilled a personal ritual and documented the physical changes wrought by every single year. Straddling past and present, Christenberry’s art suggests the gravity and power of the passage of time.

The exhibition is accompanied by a stunning monograph entitled William Christenberry, published by Aperture in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The book, a comprehensive survey, presents all aspects of the artist’s oeuvre as he intended it to be viewed and considered. More than half the work reproduced has not been previously published.

Courtesy The Morris Museum of Art
Images © William Christenberry

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• Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia
  

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Cecily Brown – Ausstellung in den Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Cecily Brown
25. April – 30. August 2009

Die Deichtorhallen präsentieren vom 25. April bis 30. August 2009 die erste große europäische Werkschau der in New York lebenden Malerin Cecily Brown (geb. 1969 in London). 48 Werke aus den letzten zehn Jahren werden in der Hamburger Ausstellung gezeigt.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown
Summer Love, 2000
Oil on canvas. 190.5 x 228.6 cm. (75 x 90 in.).
© Cecily Brown. Courtesy Thomas Holdings Inc. Collection

Browns energiegeladene Bilder an der Grenze von Abstraktion und Figuration zählen seit einigen Jahren zu den markantesten Positionen gegenwärtiger Malerei. Bekannt ist sie vor allem für ihre großformatigen Leinwände, in denen sie erotische Motive bis nahezu hin zur Auflösung in reine Farbigkeit abstrahiert.

Nur vier Jahre nach ihrem Abschluss an der Londoner Slade School of Fine Art tauchte Brown mit ihren erotischen Motiven als Enfant Terrible in der New Yorker Kunstszene auf und spaltet die Meinungen der Kritiker.

Die gestische Malweise der Künstlerin zeigt sich offensichtlich in ihren Bildern. So dynamisch und impulsiv, wie die 39-Jährige in ihrem New Yorker Atelier arbeitet, immer an mehreren Bildern gleichzeitig malend, erscheinen dem Betrachter die Werke. Figuren und Landschaften fließen rauschhaft und ekstatisch ineinander. In den jüngeren Bildern, die in den Deichtorhallen zu sehen sind, widmet sich Brown zunehmend – sich nie ganz von ihren erotischen Motiven abwendend – der Darstellung von Landschaften.

Inspiriert von verschiedenen Protagonisten der Malereigeschichte, beginnend beim ausgehenden Mittelalter bis heute, der figurativen Ordnung eines Nicolas Poussin, Edouard Manet und William Hogarth bis hin zum ungestümen abstrakten Expressionismus von Willem de Kooning, durchbricht Brown die Konventionen des Genres und sprengt mit ihren offensiven Arbeiten die männlich dominierte Bastion der zeitgenössischen Malerei. Bei der Erfindung ihrer eigenen Bildsprache nutzt Brown ihre Kenntnisse der Stile von Francisco de Goya, Joan Mitchell, El Greco, Hieronymus Bosch und Diego Velázquez.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown
Canopy, 2003-4,
Öl auf Leinwand/Oil on linnen, 203,2 x 203,2 cm/ 80 x 80 inches
© Cecily Brown. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Cecily Brown

Blick in die Ausstellung „Cecily Brown“ Deichtorhallen Hamburg April 2009.
Cecily Brown:” „Ha Ha Fresh” 2006, Öl auf Leinwand, 195,6 x 279.4 cm
© Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Daher hat Brown Erfahrungen in nahezu allen Genres der Malerei gemacht: von Figurstudien, Innenräumen und Landschaften über Rokoko-Portraits, Picknickszenen und Stillleben. 2005 fügte sich das traditionelle Motiv des Momento Mori und die Vanitas-Darstellung in ihr Werk ein. Zu sehen ist dies zum Beispiel in den 2005 entstandenen, doppeldeutigen Bildern „Aujourd’hui Rose“ und „Untitled (Vanity)“ , in denen zwei sich gegenüber sitzende Mädchen die Augenhöhlen eines Totenkopfes formen.

In Browns abstrakten Gemälden finden sich stets Andeutungen auf organische Formen und die Anwesenheit von Menschen, jedoch destilliert und manchmal nur durch leuchtendes Rosa, Rot, Orange und Ocker wiedergegeben.

„Eher interessiert mich die Sublimation. Ich liebe es, wie Francis Bacon über das Grinsen ohne die Katze spricht, nur das Gefühl ohne die Langweiligkeit des Ausdrucks… Figurative Bilder auf eine Art Kurzformel zu bringen und sie so direkt wie möglich zu vermitteln, das ist es, was ich schon immer beherrschen wollte. Ich will eine menschliche Präsenz in den Bildern, ohne diese ganz ausformulieren zu müssen.“

Cecily Brown

Browns ehemals figürliche Entwürfe werden durch zunehmendes Aufbrechen der Formen übersetzt ins nahezu Abstrakte. Dabei unterstreicht die Künstlerin, dass ihre Bilder keine festgelegte Bedeutung haben, sondern vielmehr den Fluss des Daseins reflektieren.

„Carnival and Lent“ (2008), mit 246,4 x 261.6 cm eines von Browns größten Bildern, löst sich in verschwommene Regsamkeit auf. Körper und Gesichter lassen sich inmitten der puren Energie der Pinselbewegung erkennen. Für das 2003 entstandene „Crapolette“ ließ sich Brown von Philip Gustons Auswahl an Rot und Rosatönen beeinflussen.

Blick in die Ausstellung

Blick in die Ausstellung „Cecily Brown“ Deichtorhallen Hamburg April 2009.
Cecily Brown: “Aujourd’hui Rose” 2005
Foto: © Wolfgang Neeb. Courtesy Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Blick in die Ausstellung

Blick in die Ausstellung „Cecily Brown“Deichtorhallen Hamburg April 2009.
Cecily Brown: “Tripe with Lemons” 2004;
“The Adoration of the Lamb” 2005-2006;
“Keychains and Snowstorms” 2004 (v.l.)
Foto: © Wolfgang Neeb. Courtesy Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Brown wird von bedeutenden Museen in aller Welt wie dem Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, dem Whitney Museum of American Art, New York oder der Tate Gallery, London gesammelt und gilt als Shooting-Star einer neuen expressiven Malerei.

Bildmaterial Courtesy Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Images © Die jeweiligen Autoren/Künstlern

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John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins: Against Tyranny at Idea Generation Gallery, London

Idea Generation Gallery, London

John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins: Against Tyranny
19th June > 19th July 2009

Counter-cultural incendiary of the 1960s and roving photojournalist John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins charts Britain’s emergence from the age of austerity into an era of pop, protest and psychedelia.

John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins

John + Rickenbacker
© John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, www.hoppy.be

Idea Generation Gallery presents a new exhibition of paraphernalia and photographs by veteran activist and revolutionary John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, many of which are being shown for the first time. Encompassing both the grand scale of mass rallies and the squalid intimacy of bedsit and backrooms of freaks, tearaways and bohemians, these electrifying images act as a record of 1960s London on the cusp of a new era, as the city shaped up for the struggle to redefine itself as a modern metropolis.

It was an exhilarating time and Hoppy was both protagonist and observer in the story, at the vanguard of a generation which broke radically with a conservative past. Founder of legendary psychedelic night club, UFO; cofounder of radical underground newspaper, The International Times; and photographer for Melody Maker, The Times and Peace News, he was well placed to record the revolution as it unfolded. This exhibition will uniquely feature rare copies of the International Times, and stunning psychedelic posters designed by Nigel Weymouth for the UFO.

Spanning a period of intense photographic activity, Hoppy’s images pull no punches and show an empire in decline, under attack from an unprecedented and rampant sub-cultural revolution that came roaring in from the shadows. Charged shots of Anti-Nuclear Rallies, Beat Poetry performances, LSD sessions and East End slums are born of an uncompromising belief in the transformative power of political activism, counter-culture and photography.

From raw revolution and clenched fists of protesters in Trafalgar Square, to posturing leather clad bikers and their chicks at the Ace Café, the power of his images derive from his proximity to the eye of the coming cultural storm.

John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins

Mick ear
© John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, www.hoppy.be

John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins

LSD meets CND 1
© John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, www.hoppy.be

Hoppy’s path to photography was not a direct one. In 1959 he set off as part of the Cheltenham Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and drove a funeral hearse to Moscow to protest against ‘the bomb’. He became separated from the group in Moscow and was eventually deported by the Russians to Finland, to the acute embarrassment of his employers, Harwell Atomic Research labs, where he worked as a reactor scientist.

Arriving in London on January 1st 1961, a portentous date for a man who was to become a driving force in this turbulent decade, he settled in West London where he rented out rooms to struggling artists. Hoppy worked as a news photographer for the Sunday Times, Melody Maker and Peace News and became a regular face at Ronnie Scott’s, and captured taking beautiful shots of great jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington performing across London as well as Beat Poetry readings, Happenings, peace marches, and portraits of leading figures like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Allen Ginsberg.

Ever the inventor and alchemist of the ‘scene’ he also co-founded the world famous International Times, a radical underground newspaper which featured Germaine Greer and William Burroughs as contributors. The legacy of this publication is long lasting, and the exhibition features rare front covers from the magazine’s history.

John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins

Tattooist 2
© John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, www.hoppy.be

Hoppy also famously worked with Joe Boyd to create The UFO club. The Tottenham Court Road venue was to become the lynch pin of psychedelic London and opened with performances from Pink Floyd and later played host to legendary bands like Procol Harum, Soft Machine and Jeff Beck.

‘Asleep for 30-odd years then rediscovered by accident, certain of the images from this brief 6-year period have now become iconic (recognised).’ Hoppy continues ‘Many more of them have not been seen before and are therefore perhaps more free from the historical accumulation of meaning than the iconics – at least for a little while. Then, word falling / image falling / lost in a dusty street half-covered in sand / the skein unravels / dust to dust.’

Images © John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, www.hoppy.be

Links

• Idea Generation Gallery, London
• John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins, www.hoppy.be

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Dirk Luckow to head Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen

Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Dirk Luckow, currently director of Kunsthalle in Kiel, has been named as the new General Director of Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen. Luckow succeeds Robert Fleck, who was director of Deichtorhallen from January 2004 to December 2008; Fleck recently was appointed General Director of the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn.

Dr. Dirk Luckow

Dr. Dirk Luckow
Foto © Martin Frommhagen

Born in Hamburg (1958) Luckow studied art history, archaeology and history at the Freie Universitaet Berlin. After working as a scientific assistant at the art collection North Rhine-Westphalia in Duesseldorf, the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum in New York and the Cologne Kunstverein he became curator and was in charge of the visual art sector of the Siemens Art Program in Munich. Since july 2002 Luckow was director of the art gallery Kiel and Executive director of the Kunstverein Kiel.

With exhibition space of more than 4,000 sq. m. the Deichtorhallen is one of the largest exhibition galleries for current fine art and photography in Europe. The northern hall is an exhibition hall for current art. The southern hall is home to the “House of Photography”, which boasts two high-profile permanent loans – the photographic collection of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation and the analog picture archive of SPIEGEL magazine.

Images © Martin Frommhagen

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